


The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

by twistedchick



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:27:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim runs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

I like to run in the morning before I head in to the station.

Two miles is a good distance, three is better. Five or more is great for once a week, too much for every day unless I had too many second helpings of Sandburg's lasagne or chili in the past week.

It's not something I get to do every day; it's more like something I do when it's not pouring rain or when I haven't spent 80 hours that week on stakeouts. But I drag myself out of bed and tie on the running shoes because it reminds me of who I am in a way I can't avoid.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't a runner.

I ran away from home after my mother left, looking for her, only to be hauled back by my father and locked in my room for a week.

I ran in track and field competitions, growing up, because it let me be alone. The more distance I could put under my feet, heading into the countryside away from everything I knew, the easier it was to deal with what remained when I stopped running, though none of it was easy and I wasn't good at dealing with it.

I ran away from home for good when I went into the Army, away from irrationality and jealous maneuvering and manipulation. If home had ever been more than a synonym for the building I slept in, that meaning had disappeared years earlier.

In the Army, we hiked. We marched, in full gear, up to ten miles on a normal day, the same distance Julius Caesar's legions went, and with the same weight of gear. He would've appreciated the firearms, but he'd have recognized the basic U.S. Army entrenching tool a lot more easily. There's only so many ways to design a shovel, and only so many ways to pack the damn thing so it doesn't crack you in the kidneys with every step you take.

I don't hike any more, unless I'm up in the hills with Sandburg when we're camping. I haven't marched since the last full-dress funeral in the department a couple of years ago.

I run.

***

"C'mon, Sandburg, move your ass. You're supposed to be throwing my weight around here, not doing modern dance." I gestured to him to move closer on the mat so I could make another lunge at him.

"Complaints, complaints. You weren't so picky a couple of hours ago. In fact, you thought I moved my ass just fine at 3 a.m." He wiggled a little as he closed in, his hands open and his arms loose, waiting for me to make a move. "Sheesh. Get you out of bed on a Saturday and you're not cuddly any more."

"That was then, this is now, Chief. You think wiggling your ass is going to keep you going when you meet some ugly hulk in an alley, you're in the wrong business." I shot a hand past his guard, toward his shoulder, trying to push or pull him off balance, but he dodged as if he were Sugar Ray Leonard and shifted his weight so I fell past him and caught my balance just in time to turn around. "That's a little better. You going to give me a fall?"

"Maybe. You making a pass at me or something?" His eyes twinkled, and his grin went wickedly enticing. It was a good thing we were alone in the apartment, practicing throws and falls on the old mats I'd signed out from the department gym. They were a little thin, but adequate for what we needed when we moved the furniture and put the mats down over the rug. If anyone from Cascade P.D. had seen that fallen-angel smile aimed at me, and my own welcoming response to it, my reputation as Major Crime's major hard ass would have been gone forever.

Not that I had that much of a bad-ass rep left after the past three years of working with the former neo-hippie witch-doctor punk, at least in the eyes of the detectives at Major Crime.

"Didn't know I still needed to try that hard. Didn't I already get a home run today?" I flashed him a grin as wicked as his own, and ducked in fast to put him in an armlock. "Or does this count?"

Blair let himself go heavy against my arm, the weight of his body pulling me just enough off balance that I tried to tighten the arm again. He repositioned his legs so one was between mine, and went down, pulling me with him enough that he could toss me over his shoulder. I hit the mat, rolled and came up again.

"See? Wiggling my ass works on you. It could work on any Neanderthal I run across."

"Yeah, yeah. Play it again, Sam ..."

***

Rangers don't just march. They run their ten miles, with wind sprints for two of them. They scatter like leaves before the gale, heading into cover, whirl back together to reconnoiter, send out one on point, one to guard the rear, the rest to sort themselves out over the terrain and take out whatever comes along that shouldn't be in their way.

I don't let myself think of all the places I've run with the Rangers. Some of them are still so classified that if I even murmured their names in my dreams I'd be violating a dozen laws. Others are such unpleasant memories that any running I do in those memories is running away.

In Peru, I ran the borders of the Chopec lands. Incacha's people kept an eye on the passes and the trails as the militia I'd organized, but I ran the forest in between as a scout. I moved out every few days, camping in different places every night for eight to ten days, then back to the village, then out again in a different pattern, over and over. I had to be careful not to run in the same tracks each time; I didn't want an onlooker to find a path I'd created and realize that the Chopec had an armed guard. One incautious footprint of a standard military-issue boot in the wrong place would have given it away. I didn't let that happen.

I had no choice. All I had left at that point was duty, nothing more, and my duty as a Ranger was to fulfill my mission, even if I was the last one of my command alive to do it. That's what Rangers do.

So I ran. I hid. I fought. I killed. I set traps along the border, ones I'd known how to do and ones I learned from Incacha's brothers and friends, and checked them every time I came around. And I kept running, month after month, running deep into the inner silence I'd found when I was a kid running track, running beyond the edges of my mind and almost as far as the borders of my senses until that second chopper landed and I came out of the forest to find that I wasn't the only Ranger in the Chopec lands any more.

***

"Jim?"

"What?"

"Are you going to pass the butter or are you going to commune with it for the next ten minutes?"

"Oh, sorry."

"What's going on? You're not zoning but you're definitely not here."

"Just thinking about the Corwyn case, Chief. I know I'm missing something there. Can we go check out the crime scene again after lunch? I know it's Saturday, but ... "

"Hey, it's important. I don't have to be anywhere today. Let's go do it."

"Thanks, Chief."

***

When I came back to Cascade, after Peru and the military, I wasn't running toward anything as much as running away from what the Army had become for me: a place of shadows and dishonor where I couldn't keep anyone including myself safe from the politicians and the influence peddlers. I could have gone anywhere, but Cascade had one advantage for me it was familiar turf. I knew where I could run, where I could go to ground and lie hidden until the hunt passed if need be.

The senses that had awakened in Peru seemed calmer when I ran. Running, I wasn't either civilized or primitive, just a man, moving, feeling the way the body reacts to wind and rain and temperature. No camouflage, no deception, nothing covert. But it was as if I could see behind myself, above my head and below my feet as I moved, without even trying. I felt like the jaguars that I'd seen in Peru, as much a part of the place they ran as the trees they ran through.

The Rangers taught me how to kill, how to survive the worst of what could be done to a human and still do the job I'd been ordered to do. Peru taught me to keep all of that inside, fight without conscience or pity to defend the land in my charge, and run to cover to fight another day. I knew that as a civilian I'd have to learn to leave most of that behind me, in the shadows of my mind, in the trained reflexes I couldn't allow myself to use against jaywalkers or clumsy neighbors bringing in the newspaper a little too loudly. So I went back to what I knew would get me through it all.

The day I applied to the Police Academy, I bought a pair of running shoes. By the time I'd finished the short course for veterans and others with experience, I'd worn the rippled pattern off the soles of that pair and had to hot-glue them back together at least once. I spent a chunk of the first paycheck from Cascade P.D. on two more pair, a little better quality, and spent my off-duty time relearning my home turf on my feet.

***

"Okay, Jim, what are you picking up here? Talk to me."

"There's something down here, on the floor."

"Mud? Dirt? Grease?"

"No, something in the mud. See, that plant? It doesn't belong here."

"It looks like chamomile to me, Jim."

"But it doesn't smell like chamomile, not like the kind you make into tea. It smells more like -- oh, this is going to sound stupid -- it smells more like pineapple."

"That's not stupid at all. There's a relative of chamomile that's called pineapple weed."

"Does it grow around here, Darwin?"

"Hmm. I don't recall seeing it much. Maybe a garden store would have some. It's all over the place further north; it's a common lawn weed in Anchorage."

"Does it look different up there than here?"

"It grows a lot taller; I remember playing in it when I was up there with Naomi one summer, and it must have been eight or ten inches high. Around here, if it gets to four inches it's doing incredibly well. You think Corwyn's killer came from Alaska?"

"Could be, Chief. Look at this -- it's about eight inches tall. How did we miss this before?"

"Jim, it's a warehouse, it's full of strange smells. Easy enough to miss something. At least you remembered that something smelled different. That's a higher level of sensory memory than you used to have. You're getting better at this stuff, and it shows."

"What can I say? I've got a good partner to keep my nose to the grindstone."

"Bad cop. No donut."

"Yeah, sure. Let's take this over to Simon."

***

I met Carolyn while I was running. I'd seen her at the station, but we were in different departments and both of us were busy. I was trying to make my bones as a cop, closing cases, and she was involved in the work at a different level. I was just another officer, working in Narcotics and then in Vice, nobody she'd notice from the rest of the crowd.

She'd tripped, avoiding a child's ball that had rolled into her path, and I came around a corner too fast and ran into her. When I helped her up and apologized, and we realized that both of us were in the park for the same reason, to run off some of the tensions of police work, we started running together.

And then we started to stay indoors, together, and expend energy in other ways than wearing out shoe treads.

And then she moved in with me.

And then we were married.

The things we expected of each other as friends and lovers seemed harder to do as husband and wife. Before, we'd been each other's escape from the grind of police work; now there was no way to avoid it. We went to work together, we came home together, and life shrank down to the walls of the loft and the walls of the station and the places I went on cases. I stopped running, stopped exploring, and went to cover, but there was no cover, no place to heal from the wounds that opened on the job. I couldn't shake off the rough, angry man I'd become as a Vice cop, because there were no borders in my life any more, no customs stations where I could declare that on this side of the line I was a cop and on that side of it I was just a tired man who wanted a quiet life.

It wasn't all her fault, or mine. We were two good people who cared deeply about one another and could not be happy together.

And then she moved out.

And then we were divorced.

And then I was running alone again.

***

"It's what, Sandburg?"

"Pineapple weed, Captain. It's a variety of chamomile, but it doesn't grow this big around here, only further north."

"Such as where?"

"The lower coastal edge of Alaska, such as Anchorage. Probably some of the islands along the peninsula as well, like near Juneau, but probably not out in the Aleutians. See, I brought along a field guide to plants; notice the height of the plants at various locations. This only grows a couple of inches high around here."

"But what you found is about twice that size. Jim, what kind of business was Corwyn doing? I think we'd better look into this."

"We're ahead of you, Simon. Sandburg found this listing on the Internet."

"Hmm. Contracting heavy equipment for construction, with an affiliate doing importing and another one booking customized fishing and hunting trips."

"Yeah. Nothing like diversification."

"Are you two thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Let's see. The sportsmen's trips could cover quite a few other things, like smuggling, for instance. Tourists get checked over really well, most of the time, but who looks at the inside of construction equipment? And there's that office Corwyn had in Nome. I've been to Nome. Except when the Iditarod Race is on, it's really small. Not a lot of tourists, or construction. Why would someone who wants to be a contractor have an office in a place like that, when most of the construction's in Anchorage or Fairbanks, or along the Pipeline? It's way far from central."

"And you found this weed where in the warehouse?"

"Behind the stack of pallets on the west side, in what looked like mud tread tracks from heavy equipment. I'm not surprised our people didn't pick up on it; it was a long way away from the body and not in the line of fire."

"Let's get Forensics back there to finish the job. You two, go on with it. See if we can track Corwyn's business partners coming back from Alaska or British Columbia within the last two weeks."

"We're on it, Captain."

***

I bought another pair of running shoes, and hit the streets. I'd tried running on an indoor track for a while, to avoid the wintertime blues, but it made me feel like a gerbil with the walls closing in even tighter. Better to chance sprains and shin splints and sniffles than to feel confined.

Every once in a while, I'd see a pretty girl running, and consider bringing her home, but I didn't do it. I was still recovering from the burns of the last time I'd done that. It was easier to connect with one of the long, lean men who ran with grace and efficiency, who felt comfortable with their bodies and who, when the running shorts came off, kept that same coiled energy during sex. I ran my hands over their spare bodies, the tough, wiry muscles and long limbs, and ran my own marathons with them as our legs tangled and our bodies surged together. I was always careful, always discreet; I didn't bring them to the loft, or let any other part of my life overlap the part that lay panting in bed, tasting salt sweat from the back of another man's shoulder blade. It was what it was, sex, exercise, feeling the body move well.

It was just another kind of running, taking me back out to the borderlands again.

***

"Anything on the airlines?"

"Striking out, Jim. Let's rethink this."

"Cruise ships."

"Too slow."

"Ferryboats."

"Ferries?"

"Yeah. Seattle to Vancouver to Juneau to Seward. Regular schedules."

"Right, Seward's the deepwater port for Anchorage, isn't it? Got it....okay, this looks good. Passenger listings for the ferry from Seattle to Seward. Matthew Amberson made two trips in the last two weeks, there and back."

"And the ferry takes heavy equipment and trucks, which would explain how the plant got there. That gives us opportunity and means, but what's the motive?"

"Money? Power? Art?"

"Art, Chief?"

"Lots of art of indigenous people in Alaska, man. Maybe he was after artifacts, the kind you wouldn't get at the local trading post?"

"You think so? Corwyn?"

"Yeah. You're right. Man wouldn't know an indigenous artifact if it bit him in the ass."

"Smuggling walrus ivory or furs?"

"Ivory I could see, but nobody with sense would put furs anywhere near the kind of axle grease on those heavy earth movers. Besides, the fur market is way down now; it's not worth his while."

"Construction equipment."

"So?"

"Construction's regulated carefully for environmental effect in parts of Alaska. Let's see if we can find out what that equipment was for."

"Jim, we don't even know what kind of equipment it was."

"Chief, the tread marks were pretty distinctive. Check the ferryboat manifest. I bet what I found will match."

"Right."

***

One of the first things I noticed about Sandburg was that he ran all the time -- after me. Not on a track or a road, but into danger. He'd follow me wherever I was going, his legs pumping to catch up often as not, and he'd be right there almost on top of me.

Back when just dealing with the senses was painful and his tests were worse than annoying, I hated the testing, but I couldn't dislike him. It wasn't just that he was trying so hard, but that he was capable and kind, and as overwhelmed by what was going on as I was. He worked hard to help me, and he was interested in so many things. It was as if he'd aced a class somewhere along the line on 'how to never be boring.' No matter what came up, he had an idea, a theory, some book he could look in to find out what was needed. It didn't matter if it was my strange reaction to after-shave or something that happened while investigating a case he always came up with something.

In those days I could only run late at night when the city was quiet, when the only flashing lights came from street signals and the few cars could be heard blocks away before they reached me, so I could turn down my sensitivity. Sandburg wasn't willing to let me go out alone, though, just in case I zoned, so he started running with me.

We didn't do a lot of mileage, and we went slower than I usually ran so we could be at the same pace. It wasn't every day, just when it fitted into his schedule as well as mine at first. But we fell into a rhythm of movement, together, not needing to talk, just to move together through the cool damp streets in a kind of physical meditation. And it helped. When we did talk, it wasn't about work, but about a movie, or some book he'd read, or a lecture he'd heard at the university that he thought I'd be interested in. It was a break from the treadmill.

He's no world-class runner, but he does well enough. He got used to me sprinting ahead for a little while and circling back, and he'd slow to a walk and let himself take a breather while I speeded up. He'd spent too many years in classrooms to be able to jump right into the kind of condition I was in, but he caught up quickly. He's never going to be able to pump the amount of iron I do in the station's weight room, but when it comes to running he's right with me, pacing me.

***

"Jim, I've got some articles here from the Anchorage newspaper, about problems with construction projects Corwyn was bidding on. Take a look."

"Possible grand jury investigation into bidding practices. Financial records subpoenaed. I think we've got our motive here."

"Whoa, yeah. Corwyn was in hot water and trying to haul Amberson in with him. Nasty situation."

"You want to bet that Amberson decided to step in and deal with it first?"

***

Sandburg surprised me. For such a bouncy guy, he's actually pretty quiet and peaceful to live with. He didn't take up a lot of space, physically or mentally. He wasn't in my face except when my senses were out of whack, and then it was to help me fix whatever was wrong. The rest of the time he was there but not a bother, part of the furniture. Background, in a good way.

I'd expected to endure his presence for that week; I hadn't expected it to be enjoyable. I hadn't expected to like having anyone else in my space at all. When I realized how much I liked having him around, I decided that one week could be stretched to the length of geological time, if necessary. Wasn't that how long it took God to make the universe or something, including dinosaurs?

Then again, dinosaurs were probably a little more predictable than Sandburg at times, but I could roll with it. I'd be annoyed, I'd yell, he'd placate, he'd be back in my face again about something else, and it would all work out.

Predictable patterns are good.

***

"SANDBURG! This place looks like a bomb hit it!"

"Oh, cool your jets, Jim. It's just a few books and papers that blew over with the window open. Go make yourself some coffee and I'll clean it up. See? Nothing's so bad it can't be fixed. You developing an enhanced sense of housekeeping or something?"

"Grumph. Urmph. All right. I over-reacted. I'm sorry. Have some coffee."

"Thanks. What bit you in the ass, man? That was kind of sudden."

"My nose has been itching ever since we went back to that warehouse. I guess when we came in some dust or something must have just gotten to me, made it kick up again."

"The coffee should help. Hot liquids and all that. Man, was Simon ever surprised when you told him about that pineapple weed."

"Yeah. I thought he'd eat his cigar. But we've got a solid link now to tie Corwyn's partner to the murder, and with an APB out on him, this should wrap up really nicely. Chief, how'd you know about pineapple weed?"

"Do you really want to know all of the things Naomi had me learn to recognize as food?"

"Um. No. I think I'll pass on that."

***

Naomi's a sprinter. Fast starts, fast exits, quick-burning energy, but not a lot of distance. Her endurance comes from meditation, not the kind of training her son has learned. She can't do the day after day work to keep the relationship going oh, she's good with Blair most of the time, but not with herself. She seems to run away from herself every time she gets too close to the finish line, too close to seeing the difference between what is there and what could be there.

I could be wrong, though. She did a hell of a job bringing up her kid, teaching him how to appreciate all kinds of people and not just the ones who are as smart as he is, which is damn few of them. Psychos, murderers, rogue agents, drug dealers, gang leaders and their elderly relatives he could talk to them all, in their own terms, on their own turf and find a way to back up whatever I was doing.

While I was learning to see that in him, I was running marathons and endurance trials on the job. What else would you call it when I'm running as hard as I can to get to an assassin before the target is killed, or groping nearly blind on the underside of a moving train, or running past my own fears to go into deep sea water? What else can you call it when he's there for me, and with me, throughout it all?

No matter how far or fast I ran, he was with me at the finish line on every case.

***

"So, what do you want for dinner, Jim? Stir-fry, left-overs, or take-out?

"Why don't you order some Chinese for us while I'm in the shower, and then you can wash up while I wait for it to arrive?"

"No, no, I'm not going to wait for all the cold water. No way."

"Conserve water? Phone after we're both out?"

"Now, you're talking."

***

It probably makes sense in some weird way that the times when I was hardest on him, when I threw him out and treated him badly, I was too upset to run. The emotions made me physically ill; my stomach grabbed and twisted and I felt dizzy and disconnected.

He'd gotten too close. He'd moved into the open territory of my heart, staking a claim on the burnt-over district with a pencil and a research project, and marking his territory with the tracks of his sea-blue eyes. He'd set up camp all over me, in almost every way imaginable, in my mind and my dreams and my work and my life. When he'd walked into my heart as well, he'd gone into places I'd never shared with anyone, not even Carolyn.

I didn't know how to let someone be that close to me, inside my perimeter of safety. I didn't know how to disable the reflexes that I'd been trained to use almost automatically, to keep potential casualties away from me, and to keep myself from becoming a casualty as well.

***

"Which do you like better, Jim Telly Savalas in The Dirty Dozen or Anthony Quinn in The Guns of Navarone?"

"Actually, I like David Niven in Navarone."

"Really? I wouldn't have expected that. Why?"

"Because he was for real. Niven worked in covert ops as a commando during World War II; that's the British equivalent of a Ranger. He's a lot more like the men I knew than either Savalas or Quinn, though I met a lot of guys like them too."

"I didn't realize that. I had this idea that all the Rangers looked like, well, like you. Big. Buff."

"Oh, no, Chief. They're chosen for endurance and toughness, as well as other things, and there's as many wiry guys in there as there are former football jocks like me. As long as he could survive the training, he'd be in, and a lot of it's psychological toughening."

"Makes sense. You don't need to convince me that the Rangers are the best of the best. You're a great ad for them."

"I'm not one of them any more; I did my job and left."

"Maybe you left the Rangers, but being a Ranger has never completely left you. I did some research on those guys before I moved in with you, and they are an impressive group. I know I couldn't get through a lot of what they do routinely."

"I wouldn't worry about it. I don't think most of them could deal well with an archeology dig or with chasing around keeping me out of trouble."

"Oh, you mean that's not why the Rangers were created, to keep Jim Ellison out of trouble?"

"Very funny, Einstein."

***

I tried increasing my mileage, to put more space between him and myself within the boundaries of my life. It didn't work. In every step I could feel the attraction that was insinuating itself into the space between my muscles and my bones, leaking into the bone marrow and blossoming into the blood stream. He'd come so far inside my perimeter that I couldn't escape him, not even after ten miles when my lungs heaved and my leg muscles trembled. My heart still pounded even harder as I went up the elevator to the loft and smelled the warmth of his presence, reading in the living room.

For him, words run and dance on the pages. For me, they plod like a private on the twelfth hour of a forced march in full gear.

He'd overrun his own fear-laden boundaries so often I didn't know where they were any more. He'd held a gun and fired it; he'd lied like a trooper to save his own life and mine; he'd jumped from heights that terrified him and dealt with whatever came along. His geography had mutated as it encountered mine, into lands both familiar and territories strange and shadowed. I couldn't always see my feet on the paths, or find where his feet had run so I could track his journey. I didn't know where my territory ended any more or his began; so much was new that hadn't been part of me before.

Maybe it was inevitable that I'd fall into my own trap -- the oldest one, fear of betrayal and discovery, of being brought helplessly into open country to be dissected by prying eyes. And that he'd reach down with a hand to pull me up to safety, again, of his own choice, when he could have walked away and left me there.

***

"You going running? It's after eleven, man."

"Yeah. I think I want to go down to the park, now that it's stopped raining. Care to come along?"

"Not this time, thanks. But I'll be here when you get back."

"I'm counting on it."

***

Rangers aren't necessarily expected to do the right thing by civilian standards. They're expected to follow orders, and whatever that entails is what is right. It isn't about morality, or ethics, but doing the will of the ones who sent you, and running on ahead for the next mission.

The last paragraph of the Ranger Creed reads: Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

I'd learned to apply that to my life, no matter where I was or what I was doing.

The only way I could do that now, as a detective, was to use my Sentinel senses to their fullest. The only way I'd survive the onslaught of those enhanced senses and keep my sanity was to have Blair with me. And the only way I'd still have my Guide with me was if I gave up all claim upon him as a Sentinel and let myself, as a man, allow him to stay in my heart.

Self-preservation had to take a back seat, because, after all, it wasn't about me any more than being a Ranger had been about me. It all was about being part of this Sentinel-Guide relationship, in whatever form it would take, no matter what. Get that right, and the rest of my life would work out just fine.

If I lost Blair, even if it saved the entire city of Cascade, it would be worse than the helicopter crash, worse than the divorce or my mother's disappearance.

I couldn't be the lone survivor of this mission.

It finally sank in that I had to turn around.

***

I reached the bottom of the park, a mile away, and made the great curve under the streetlights past the carousel and the rose garden, and slowed a little for the long gradual grade uphill to the loft. The night air felt damp and fragrant, and the streets were quiet. I could hear the squishing sound of the treads in my running shoes against the sidewalk, squish-sweep as the foot rose again. Squish-sweep. Squish-sweep.

When I looked up from a block away, Blair was sitting on the balcony waiting for me. I could see him smiling, drinking a cup of tea, with a small pot and a second cup sitting next to him. At this time of night it was probably herbal or some low-caffeine blend, something I never would have tried a few years ago, but I'd found that it didn't taste bad after a run.

He would wait until after I'd taken a fast shower, watching the stars, and would hand me my cup when I emerged from the bathroom. I'd take a drink and tell him how good it tasted, and I'd put the cup aside on the kitchen island and wrap my arms around him and kiss him, and taste the spicy flowery flavor of tea and Blair, and we'd walk upstairs and put the cups down on the coasters Blair had found for the bedside table, and drink the rest of the tea later, after we'd catalogued each other's heartbeats and breathing rates and sensations -- his taste, his touch, the rub of skin on skin, the almost invisible hairs in the places I could find without looking, the sounds he made when he was just on the edge waiting to fly and calling me to come with him and soar -- oh, yes, all the sensations -- for a long time.

Cold tea can taste wonderful after a long run when you're finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in a zine by Blackfly Press.


End file.
